I was doing a lot of web design at the time. And anybody that has an agent thinks, Why do I need an agent? Maybe it's a little different as an actor - of course you need an agent - but any kind of agency that's selling something for you, you think, Why can't I sell this myself? It doesn't make sense.

Over the years, she [my mother] always encouraged me in the arts. She actually worked at an art museum when we were kids. I took classes there. She was the one that, when we'd go to the store and I would have a pack of eight pastels, she'd say, No, get the 24-pack. She was always encouraging me to get the best materials, which was really aweso

I always knew I was going to be an artist. It was a done deal right from when I was very little. It sounds like the dumbest thing ever, but my mom used to doodle when she was on the telephone and she made these - they weren't just little scribbles - these little shapes and forms. I don't know why she did it. I've never seen her do it again.

It was a fortunate moment in history that I happened to be in. There was a confluence of the internet and all this other stuff that I was able to capitalize on.

But when I was a kid, I would look at the paper next to the phone and I would think to myself, I want to do that. So I started doing that. [doodling]

Well, I talk about one moment in the book, but I don't know if that's my moment of discovery. It was a moment. In the book, I talk about how I started shooting, how I became a photographer.

My mom had a Canon AE1 camera and I read the manual and that's basically how I became a photographer. I was in the Baltimore punk scene. I knew it was a special time, so I went out and documented that whole era. I was the only person to really do it of my friends in real black and white, beautiful portraits.

A lot of people have done that over the years. Many of the agencies today were started by photographers. It's a normal progression. It wasn't some crazy idea, it was just, Can we start our own agency? Can we do this?